The Reverend Mike Riggins 6/11/23

Answer the Call!

Genesis 12:1-9
Matthew 9:9-13

God called. Abram obeyed. Because he did, a nation formed.

Abram had many reasons not to go. At the end of Genesis 11 we find that his father

had moved his extended family—including Abram and his wife, Sarai—from Ur to Haran.

Both sites are definitively located by archaeologists. Ur lay near the banks of the Euphrates

River in what we now know as southern Iraq. Even in Abram's day (approximately 1,900

years before Christ) Ur had a towering tower and an urbane atmosphere. Its markets sold

produce brought into town from miles away. It may have served as a regional capital at the

time; later it would sink into the sands after the Euphrates changed course, leaving it bone dry

in a hot part of the world. Genesis tells us nothing about why Abram's father left Ur, simply

that he led his family to Haran, today yet a city way upriver in today's southeastern Turkey.

There they flourished, as we can prove from the terse account we read in Genesis 12.

Haran also played an important role in that time and place. It, too, was a center for

government and commerce. It sat on critical trade routes. Cedar logs from Lebanon, grain

from today's Azerbaijan and spices from the east—possibly as far away as India—all passed

through. Residents of stature enriched themselves in trade and in office. By the time God

called Abram he had land, possessions and “persons they had gotten in Haran.” These were

slaves. Abram had the means to purchase slaves, in the plural. You do not have to read too

deeply between the lines to see he had done rather well in Haran. Yet when God called,
Abram went. Genesis 12:1-3 contain the first record of a covenant God made with a specific

human being. In this iteration, God makes all the promises. God specifies no required

response from this human being. Yet God clearly implies one utterly required response: faith.

Abram must trust God. He must go, to a land “which I will show you”, God tells him. Rich,

comfortable Abram must leave it all behind and go to a place he knows nothing about.

Against all odds, he does.

The land that God would show Abram lay due south. But he and his retinue would

have walked west, at first, because the straight line path led to mountains and desert. So

they would have made for the great Mediterranean road, even then a major north-south

corridor. Passing through today's Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, they entered Canaan from the

north and continued down through Galilee, past the richest farmland in today's Israel. Abram

may have been listening for God to tell him that was the place, but apparently no word came.

So he kept moving south, into today's West Bank. He reached Schechem, a center of

Canaanite worship. God told him, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So Abram built

an altar there. Yet still he continued his trek, turning east to the ridge of mountains that lay

beyond the River Jordan. Atop a pass there he built another altar and worshiped God. Still

they did not stop, moving farther south almost as far as Jerusalem, which did not yet exist.

Why did Abram continue walking around after God told him, “To your descendants I will

give this land”? Some scholars attempt to place perhaps too much stress on the “your

descendants” part. God meant to give Abram himself different land, they contend. But this

idea ignores the fact that in the mind of Abram there was no meaningful distinction between

himself and his family. Whatever was his would eventually become theirs. Writing sixty years

ago the brilliant commentator Gerhard von Rad probably had the best explanation for Abram's
continued movements. He was, von Rad believed, claiming all the territory his descendants

would eventually occupy. In other words, God would give them more than the area around

Schechem. They would possess hundreds of square miles more.

To recap: God told Abram to leave a comfortable life for a land God would show him.

Abram trusted God and obeyed. As the Apostle Paul would write, “his faith was reckoned to

him as righteousness.” Therefore God blessed Abram as he had promised.

Jesus called Matthew. Matthew obeyed. He followed Jesus and then wrote about

what he had seen and heard.

By Matthew chapter nine, Jesus has already put together a solid resume. He has

preached his magnum opus, the Sermon on the Mount, in which he set forth many of the

central themes of his ministry. He has survived his test in the desert at Satan's hands. He

has performed a few miracles. In fact, he has just commanded a paralytic to walk. In a sense

he called that man, too, and he obeyed. He got up and walked. Matthew tells us, “as Jesus

passed on from there he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office...” If you want to

start a fight in a crowded seminary coffee lounge, walk in and state, in a loud voice, “This

Matthew and Matthew the Gospel writer were the same man.” Two factions will instantly

form, those who agree and those who disagree. You will hear raised voices citing the Roman

tax system; James, the son of Alpheaus; literacy rates in Galilee at the time; the document

theory of biblical criticism; and more. Much more. I do not exaggerate. Well, maybe they

would not raise their voices, but the disagreement would absolutely happen and it would

certainly cover every one of the topics I listed.

 I tend to give weight to the same guy theory. It has been the tradition of the church

from the very earliest years in the Christian Era. Writing of oneself in the third person was a

widely-adopted practice in the Greek-influenced world, and whoever wrote Matthew wrote in

Greek. And, frankly, I do not buy some of the “another guy” arguments. I raise the question

now because while I will stipulate I could be wrong, I think if they are one and the same we

have here in Matthew 9 a deeply personal window into Jesus' ministry. So I will proceed on

that basis. As Matthew tells it, Jesus called him in an offhand manner. “Follow me” was all he

said. Though the text does not say so, we are to understand Matthew just got up and did.

For the next verse tells us, “And as he sat at table in his house...” Who is the he there?

Jesus? No, the rest of the verse reads, “behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and

sat down with Jesus and his disciples.” The he is Matthew. He must be a man of means. He

owns a home, and one spacious enough to seat “many” people. No matter whether mere

minutes or some longer period of time has intervened, Matthew has already become a

disciple himself. From “sitting at the tax office” to following Jesus in the blink of an eye. Like

Abram just going, Matthew just goes. And to this dinner party, apparently, he invites his

associates in the taxing business. These men would all have been Jews serving as Roman

lackeys. The Romans employed locals throughout their Empire to collect taxes. Locals knew

who had the money. As I asked the Monday morning Bible study folks, when people know an

occupying army is coming, what is one of the first things they do? They hide their cash and

their valuables. But Matthew would have known who had what to hide. And he would have

collected taxes on it all, keeping a percentage for himself and getting rich in the process. No

wonder the Jews considered tax collectors sinners and hated them.

When the self-righteous Pharisees see this meal happening, they demand of Jesus'
disciples that they explain it. No self-respecting rabbi—such as Jesus presumably was—

would associate with such scum. Jesus puts them in their place with a reference to doctors

working on the sick, not the well. He says, “For I came to call not the righteous but sinners.”

His implication is that he has no plan to include the Pharisees in his realm. They get the

point. This becomes one of the first face-offs they will have with Jesus, leading to his

crucifixion. To recap: Jesus called. Matthew obeyed. And in the next few hours or days he

becomes a kind of lived parable. Through Matthew, Jesus makes the point that he has come

for those who have never considered themselves fit for God's grace.

God called. Dee Parsons obeyed. And an important, godly thing is happening.

Dee was a home nurse in Salem, Massachusetts. She served a two-year stint as a

Lutheran medical missionary on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. Upon her return to

Salem, she earned another degree and began working as a public health official. One day

she read in the Boston Globe of a nearby Lutheran congregation badly mishandling a sexual

abuse situation. The details are not relevant to this illustration, but suffice it to say that

reading them would turn anybody's stomach. They certainly did mine. When after months

and months neither the congregation nor the Lutheran Synod to which it belonged did

anything meaningful about it, the victim's family filed a civil lawsuit. The Synod attempted to

settle out of court, but it had gotten too late. The family insisted on going to trial. In her public

health capacity, Dee Parsons became involved as a part of an investigative team employed

through the court by the state. She learned not only even more, and more disgusting, details

about that case, but also of a pattern of such abuse alleged against the same pastor.

“I had either to walk away from it or do something real about it,” Ms. Parsons told the
same Globe reporters who had broken the story. She started a blog, an online community in

which she posted stories about sexual abuse in the church. She was astounded at how many

cases there were. Please note that neither she nor I have said the words “Roman Catholic” in

this story. Parsons went on to tell those reporters, “A decade ago, there were few places that

people could go to tell their stories of abuse and find not only support and understanding but

someone who would believe their story. I am one of those storytellers. Churches need to be

educated that abusers are alive and well in the Protestant church. The church is slowly

waking up, and I look at myself as an alarm clock.” She added that this blog has become a

second full-time job, one that often leaves her emotionally exhausted and cynical.

But Dee Parsons strongly believes God has called her to it. She never heard the

physical voice of God, but the conviction that God has impelled her into this work is, in her

words, “relentless and insistent”. She must do it. She does do it. Because she does other

women—and not a few men—have found a human network that genuinely listens to their

stories and, crucially, believes them. To recap: God called her. She trusted God and

answered the call. People are finding some measure of healing because she did.

The applications of some Bible passages can be a little unclear. Not so with these two

from Genesis and Matthew. God calls. Will we obey? Look around the church and you will

see all kinds of examples. If we had a choir today you would be looking at a dozen or so

people who answered that call. Teaching, preparing receptions and meals, driving the bus,

maintaining this building: these are but a few answered calls. I ask each person here to go to

God in prayer and to make listening a big part of those prayers. To what work does God call

you? Will you listen for the answer? And will you obey it? We teach that all Christians have

a calling. What is yours?